


broken hearts, numb cavities

by rowansberry (amarowan)



Category: A Crown of Candy - Fandom, Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Excessive Use of Parentheses, Gen, Ghosts, Post Episode 9, Reflections as a Plot Device, Ruby-centric, Spirits, Technically?, i wrote this at 2 am and didn't edit we die like heroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24667507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amarowan/pseuds/rowansberry
Summary: after jet dies, ruby rocks has a complicated relationship with her reflection.-set an undetermined amount of time after jet's death and the war. jet's death is only referenced and not described.
Relationships: Jet Rocks & Ruby Rocks, just some good sisterly angst
Comments: 18
Kudos: 57





	broken hearts, numb cavities

Ruby catches sight of her reflection everywhere, in mirrors, in the sugar-glass windows that line the shops of Dulcington and the wide halls of Castle Candy, in the still surface of the pool of water from which the soft violet- and blush-coloured mists rise. 

Ruby Rocks sees her reflection, and does double-take every time. 

She hates it.

They could barely stand to look at her, after. Her mom and dad, and Theo, and all the others — Ruby knows that every time they saw her, they saw Jet, and she couldn’t blame them; she does too. Liam was the exception, was the one that could look her in the eyes the night she collapsed, surrounded by shards of reflective glass in the silvery moonlight, the shattered mirror staring down on her like a gaping wound (in the guest room, because. Well. Her room had been  _ their _ room, and Ruby already felt like half of her was missing. She didn’t need an empty bed across the room and all the little trinkets Jet would collect from the town and keep at her bedside to remind her) and sobbed, screaming, hand clutching the locket on her neck that would never glow as bright. Was the only one that could look at her and swallow down the grief that rose like the crests of the yogurt sea and let her be Ruby, just Ruby. 

Ruby. Who looks in the mirror and can never escape the way she looks just like Jet. Who will carry the echo of her sister on her face as long as she lives, and be haunted by her own bone structure every time she sees her reflection.

(After a few shattered mirrors, Caramelinda orders for every reflective surface in the Castle Candy to be covered, veiled. She sees the hurt in Ruby’s face, the way that every time she sees herself it’s a blow to a wound that’s only begun to heal, and Caramelinda takes the hurt away the only way she knows how. It doesn’t do anything to erase the pangs of sorrow that run her through whenever she sees Ruby, but if she focuses on the buttons that go down Ruby’s neck, or the sparkling of her tiara in the light of the Bulb, instead of those high cheekbones and piercing dark eyes, it helps. Caramelinda just hopes that Ruby doesn’t notice how her own mother can barely stand to look at her.) (She does.)

It’s especially bad in all those long, grand hallways with windows that stretch from floor to ceiling — as Ruby walks through the halls, if she’s not careful, she’ll mistake the familiar figure in the window for Jet, and turn to the figure, a witty quip in twinspeak on the tip of her tongue, only to swallow it bitterly when she faces no one but herself and remembers. 

Ruby Rocks, who used to delight in seeing the image of her aunt in the reflections of every surface that could hold one, in the connections to someone who has since passed but continues to watch her and help her and protect her, and used to marvel at how when she looked at Jet, she could almost pretend she was looking into a mirror, is too far gone in her grief to view her reflection as anything but a curse.

As the days go on, Ruby starts to see herself in her reflection again. Not Jet. Not Jet’s sister. Not an identical twin, a half of a pair. Ruby Rocks. Heir to the Candian Throne. (That’s still odd for her to think about, that she, like her father, is heir to a throne that she never dreamed she’d inherit. That she’s a lot more like her father than she cares to admit.) (Ruby won’t say that it’s something that brought them a little closer, the loss, and the knowledge that they’ve both lost their sisters, the people that were supposed to always be there, that there is a responsibility that has been thrust upon their shoulders that they did not ask for, but she won’t  _ not _ say it, either.)

She gets— hopeful, almost. Remembering that she’s seen Lazuli, that there’s  _ something  _ out there after death, that maybe, just maybe, Jet is out there too. She researches, spends hours poring over texts in the expansive library in the castle and the even larger collection in the city, picking Cumulous’ brain for anything he remembered about Lazuli and her magic. (And she learns a lot, her magic only improving with every new theory to test or trick to try. Caramelinda doesn’t say it, but she can see Lazuli in her a little more, in the way that Ruby throws herself into her studies for once, driven to learn more, always more, until her goal can finally be reached. Amethar knows she sees it, because he sees it too, and they spend a tense night talking over tea, and even if they sleep in separate beds there’s a little bit of closeness that they recover.) She dreams, about things that shake her awake in a cold sweat with tears running down her face, about glinting eyes and daggers and the cold scent of peppermint chilling her to her bones as she leaps out into the equally cold night air, but never like  _ that _ , again. Never with Jet.

She begins to use Mage Hand more often, hoping every time that it appears a spectral black instead of blue, a rougher, calloused hand instead of slender. It’s almost routine, after a certain amount of trials, the sharp spikes of anticipation and the slow deflation of disappointment in her chest, right below where her necklace hangs, still and dim. 

Ruby looks at her reflection with anticipation instead of shame and guilt and grief, but is rewarded only with disappointment. (It feels like drowning, limbs filling with lead and heart sinking into her chest every time. Every damn time.)

In the days where she’s overcome with anger and guilt, and can’t afford to smash any more mirrors or plates, Ruby takes up training with Theobald. (The look in Theo’s eyes as she learns to fight with a sword, Jet’s weapon of choice, is bittersweet. Pride, at her progress, and the sorrow that never seems to disappear as he sees Jet, fiery, mischievous, warrior Jet on the battlefield in every parry and every strike.) It’s an outlet, the sweat that builds between her shoulder blades and along her brow and the exertion that burns her muscles until she can barely stand. 

She duels Liam, for the hell of it, when Theo’s busy with the Tartguard, and despite both being archers Ruby carries the familiar weight of a sword at her hip, a new companion for the quiver at her back and the bow she grasps loosely in her hand. (Her right, the mirror to Jet’s left-handed grip on her flickering, quivering blade.) Liam freezes the ground beneath them halfway through, a slick, icy sheet covering the rough dirt of the training grounds. Ruby barely manages to stay standing, but sends off an arrow from Sour Scratch, letting out a soft huff of disappointment as it wisps past Liam, a few centimetres off. 

Liam reaches out with his crossbow, (and she’d be worried if Theobald hadn’t checked a thousand times that their arrows had been blunted and corked, if he hadn’t made sure that there was no way either of them could get seriously hurt from this) and Ruby acts on instinct, hand whipping out to grasp it, a spectral image of a hand floating in the air and twisting Liam’s crossbow away, the arrow shooting out towards the side and hitting a Tartguard in the side. 

He goes limp, staring down at the ice as Ruby slides her way over to knock him down and press a triumphant foot against his chest, her spectral hand holding his hands down as she unsheathes her sword and hovers the tip above his neck. “I win.”

“Ruby—” he says, and his voice catches on the way out, thick in a way she doesn’t recognize, “look at the ice.”

She does, and—

Tears fill her eyes, her sword and bow clattering against the ice as her hands go to her mouth to stifle the choked sob that escapes her. In the heat of the duel, she hadn’t even realized— she hadn’t even thought to look, after so many failed attempts—

Jet Rocks grins from the ice, a rough, calloused, glimmering black spectral hand pinning Liam down. It’s smaller than her aunt’s, the hands of a young warrior, not a A tear makes its way down her cheek, and Ruby doesn’t have to find her reflection to know that it’s mirrored on her own face. She doesn’t— can’t— say anything, but Ruby knows. 

Jet used her last moments, her last breath, to tell Ruby to run, to save her and protect her, and Ruby hated herself for so long, guilt overcoming her at the thought that maybe, just maybe, if she’d stayed, they could have all survived. Ruby never thought she’d get to fight with Jet again, but— 

She’s here. In the reflections that Ruby spent so long hating, and spent so long hoping for, and she’s here. 

Ruby Rocks catches sight of her reflections, and they’re no longer just hers — it’s the image of her sister, of her other half, of the bond that they share that can’t be broken even in the face of death. 

Ruby Rocks catches sight of her reflection, and for the first time in what feels like months, she smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> title from scott helman's sweet tooth! the rest of the song doesn't fit at all but this one line. fits. in this context
> 
> this is my contribution to the angst war, i guess? and also the first (and likely only) piece of ACOC writing i'll ever post. so. its crazy what angst in the source material will make you write
> 
> kudos and comments make my day!


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